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Language a barrier for women's coaching skills in East/SE Asia

Language is a significant barrier to raising coaching standards to international levels in women's football in East and South East Asia. This was noted by the Asian Football Confederation's project manager, Dr Shamil Kamil, who conducted a Head Coach Workshop for the AFC U-14 Girls’ Festival of Football at Vietnam's Thanh Long Sports Centre.

Communications was a key component of the workshop which was designed to convey to the participating teams’ head coaches the idea of how to effectively manage the team and help their young players get both the enjoyment of football and skill development during the festival

Dr. Kamil used a modern teaching method that encouraged the coaches to give their opinions about the topic before he gave them the information. However there were language barrier problems which prevented some participants from expressing their ideas clearly or acquiring the knowledge by themselves.

“The language barrier is a problem in the classroom but we group the participants accordingly to solve the problem and maximise the knowledge the participants can get from the course,” said Dr Kamil.